25 man guilds dying is a perception, and most of the people that say it is dying are stuck on server's that do not really have a raiding community.

You couldn't be more wrong and backwards. It's the people who believe it's not dying that are not looking beyond the success of their server.

Here is what you need to do to compare the numbers. Measure the number of 10 vs 25man guilds that downed normal LK and heroic LK before Cata... then Measure the number of 10 vs 25man guilds that have downed normal and heroic Madness.

When you compare those numbers you will see that the amount of 25man guilds dropped dramatically from Wrath to Cata once achievements, loot and lockouts were all shared.

25 man is dying cause people don't see it satisfactory enough to devote 4 times the time needed for the same result.
25 man is dying because people want the faster and more efficient way to connect point A to point Z.

So where's the problem? People that don't want to bother with that anymore are not forced to and those that want still do it.

And you know what? At least back then locks were not shared and you could run BOTH! That is not the case today, and it makes the situation much worse.

Non shared locks sucked, you were forced to run same thing 2 times a week (or 4 times in ToC) if you wanted to maximize gear, not to mention we have LFR too these days. And 25man guilds downsizing to compete in 10 bracket on offdays (with superior gear) was not really good design.

Also what you forget conviniently enough is that it is much worse to see smt you created going down.

So your 25man guild died since people were not forced to be in it anymore? Sorry, that sounds like a bad guild.

My guild was 40man guild, than 25man, than 2x10man, than 25man again and now we are running 3x10man, if people enjoy being in the guild they won't leave over raid size changes.

I doubt they would separate the lockouts. This will place the 10 man raids at a big disadvantage. I raid 25 mans and I hope they continue to support it, but we'll see how it pans out. I'd like to see them separate the achievements though. Then make it so that if you get the 25 man achievement you're locked out of the 10 man one and viceversa. Yeah yeah you're locked out of one meta per tier but bleh.

What bothers me more is:

Q: Tier 13 was the test run for LFR--what do you think worked and what could be improved upon? There's been a lot of discussion about the early exploits, and also guilds thinking they legitimately had to farm LFR in order to have the set bonuses to seriously progress.

Also, how do you show players new to raiding that there's more to raiding besides the loot? Some players think that LFR is impersonal, but those that already have existing communities like queueing up for it with friends. How do you keep everyone happy and refine it in the next tier?

LFR has been huge for us--one of the most successful features in the game, similar to when we implemented the Dungeon Finder. We can watch the numbers exponentially grow--the number of people that are raiding now, compared to before 4.3, is incredibly dramatic--it's so much more. We can't tell you the exact percentage, but it's massively larger. And not only that, they've continued to raid, and these are players that have never raided before.

Since they consider LFR raiding (sigh), their support for 25 mans might end up just for LFR raiding. The first tier of MoP raiding might not be affected, but who knows on later tiers. I hope they don't cut off support on "serious" 25 mans.

Simple. There should only be one format of raiding. Abolish one of them or kind of fuse them into a single 15 or 20 man format and reorient the efforts that would otherwise be in futily trying to tune 10 and 25 man group perfectly into creating a new difficulty level that would be harder than heroic mode and that only really skilled people could manage to complete. Think Diablo 3's Inferno difficulty.

Non shared locks sucked, you were forced to run same thing 2 times a week

Forced? The only people who really cared about maximizing their gear was some top guild or wanna be top guilds. For the rest of us running it was a choice. I ran the same instance twice because I liked it, as did most of the community

i dont see how they are dead... LFR is sone in 25, so that will seem normal to most new raiders, the only think 10 man gets you over 25 is space, that is all. 2 items drop in 10 and 5 drop in 25 becuase its fair like that. personally i would rather there only be 1 set of riading, and make it 15 os you can stack clases but you still have to bring the buffs.

18 - 9 - 2012 Find the significance in this date, and you will also find the revitalization of the best game ever.

You couldn't be more wrong and backwards. It's the people who believe it's not dying that are not looking beyond the success of their server.

Here is what you need to do to compare the numbers. Measure the number of 10 vs 25man guilds that downed normal LK and heroic LK before Cata... then Measure the number of 10 vs 25man guilds that have downed normal and heroic Madness.

When you compare those numbers you will see that the amount of 25man guilds dropped dramatically from Wrath to Cata once achievements, loot and lockouts were all shared.

This.

People saying that 25 mans are dead only on low pop realms are terribly wrong and this is the best proof.

Why is it that Blizzard killed the 25 man? If there are soooo many people that absolutely love 25's and will leave the game without them, then, uhh, why don't they get together and run 25's? I've been confused by this logic for a long time now.

My suggestion and also my general reply to this thread and the OP is this...

In order to save 25man raiding blizzard will, at the very least, have to separate achievements again.

LOOT: As a 25man raider, or even as a player in general, I do not care that much what gear other players have. I do not think that gear is the biggest issue and having the same loot from both just means the 10man raiders get their loot a little easier but they get a little less per boss. I think this works out fine in the long run as 25man guilds should continue to complete legendary quest lines faster and obtain those legendary weapons before 10mans.

REWARDS: Again I don't think that these have to be separated to influence players or to encourage 25man attendance. It doesn't bother me to see a 10man player riding the same meta-achievement mount I am riding. This is just lazy on Blizzards part for not making a separate mount with a slightly different color.

ACHIEVEMENTS: I genuinely believe that if achievements were separated this would drive enough attention and desire back into 25man raiding. While there are plenty of players that do not care...we can also admit that people can be vain. If there is a separate 25man achievement for something people will want it even if it does not provide any extra benefit except for pure achievement points. People doing 10mans will be able to wear the same gear, ride the same mount, and link their "new boss kill" achievement but when they do it should say 10man on it. This is all the change that is needed to drive people back to 25mans. With achievements being the same right now, it's like saying they did the same thing and IMO it is the root of the problem.

I remember days in vanilla when raids where 40 man and there was always not enough place for everyone who wanted to join But then again hard to have a 40 or even 25 man guild when Blizzard won't move a finger to revive dead population servers because they rather have cash form people being forced to transfer.

People saying that 25 mans are dead only on low pop realms are terribly wrong and this is the best proof.

Those numbers are hard to base any decisions on. Most raiders were in 25 man, quite a few 25 mans raided 10 mans as well, and 10 mans were just beginning to take off. I disagree that 25 mans are dying but I also disagree that everything is fine and dandy with them. They are stagnating imo.

OT: 25 Man Guilds seem to have boomed on my realm, no idea what you're on about.

And they pretty much died on mine - except ours - so "no idea what you're on about".
Also, there's always few servers that have a lot of high ranking guilds, but this an exception, not a rule. People always migrated to such places, to ran away from their own "dying" servers. Right now, it's even worse than it used to be - can't really argue with wowprogress showing much lower numbers. Saying "but on US-Illidan it's fine"(like someone did) is true - and completely irrelevant.

25 Man raiding is coming back with a Fiery passion on both the realms i raid on. you see so many guild LFM for 25man, they may not be very progressed guild, but its a start, i think 25mans will come back. its just a matter of time.

My impression with LFR is people saw what 25man raiding could be like and that its time to bring it back.

Why is it that Blizzard killed the 25 man? If there are soooo many people that absolutely love 25's and will leave the game without them, then, uhh, why don't they get together and run 25's? I've been confused by this logic for a long time now.

it´s because they want better loot if they´re running 25´s, i couldn´t think of any other reason besides this

Some servers they're fine on. Most only have a couple per faction that I've seen. Some have but 1-2 period(the server I'm on is actually a *medium pop* server-Alliance heavy, but technically around medium-and has ONE.) Others *none.*

I'm pretty sure this website is fairly up to date. Basically, right now the numbers are saying:

Number of 10 man guilds(roughly): 48.3k
25 man guilds(roughly): 2.2k

...that's a BIT Of a difference, where in Wrath, that number of *pure* 25 vs. *pure* 10 was reversed(I don't even think it was reversed to this extreme-but 25 mans were your main raiding guild in Wrath.) Recruiting for a 25 man is difficult-it seems that many people are just happy going in a 10 man guild instead. (I have nothing against any sort of raiding, for the record-I prefer large raids, but don't have a problem with smaller ones. I do think they'd be better off with one raid size, regardless of what LFR is.)

Looks to me like the 25 mans have been hit with the 100-Crack Fist already-they're just waiting to explode at this point.

This argument makes no sense to me. If you want to raid 25 join a 25 guild. When given the choice lots of people opted for 10's. Why would those players be pushed back to 25's because you like them more? Also 25's has generally been easier the whole time. People do 10's because it lets them stay as a tighter knit group with friends only. If it was based purely on whats easiest or what gives more gear 25's would win hands down, but it doesn't. That says something.